Being single can be a tough combination of porn and not having anyone to split the cooking/washing up duties with. That’s why we’re here, to offer support, friendship and camaraderie where there was none before. Unless your name is Calvin Harris in which case we’re just going to lay into your latest vinyl turd.

DONNY & MARIE OSMOND
Las Vegas
Universal
I went to Vegas last week and hated it. It’s full of fat British families in shorts and vests. I put $25 on red on the roulette table and it came up Green 00. It reminded me of an episode of Grange Hill where a student went on a date with the geeky maths teacher to a casino; he said that 00 gives you better odds over the casino than any other number. I’d always thought that to be nonsense, but evidently it’s true. And if you think you’ve just wasted your time reading my little anecdote, just be glad you haven’t wasted it listening to this song about the worst place on earth.
0
CARROT POP

CALVIN HARRIS
Flash Back
Fly Eye
Calvin is looking a bit pensive in the video to this one. No more boisterous parties at his house, or flings with grime Illuminati. The party seems to be over. This morning he’s left on his speedboat fretting about the 17 cases of the clap he notched up the night before and musing on the frailty of celebrity and life itself. Don’t worry, Hazza, we have all been there.
3
NHS ERECT

FRANKIE GOES TO HOLLYWOOD
Relax 2009
AATW
Well done, lads! You’ve only missed the boat on this shit by about three years. If this had been done back in 2006 when people were still wearing big slogans on white tees, I would understand it. You’d probably make a killing packaging it with a re-release of the Frankie Says Relax t-shirt. As it is, this song exists only as yet more extraneous evidence that modern remixes of ‘classic’ songs are utter utter plop.
1
ROY D. RAGE

DANIEL MERRIWEATHER
Water and a Flame feat. Adele
J Records
Mark Ronson’s best mate in producing rubbish song shocker! This white-boy soul is duller and lamer than the entire Simply Red back catalogue. And everything they did aside from “Fairground” (a total tune) sucked.
1
DICK HUCKNALL

A-HA
Shadowside
Universal

While hardly scaling the heights of Hunting High & Low or Scoundrel Days, A-Ha’s epitaph of a final album, Foot of the Mountain, contains enough grand synth-pop to be worth checking out. Plus, a band deciding that they are going to split and then sticking to their guns is pretty rare and in these less than dignified times.
7
PERRY NUTKINS

PINK
I Don’t Believe You
Sony BMG
This was made for a bit in One Tree Hill where one of the guys who plays basketball has a real bad argument with his best friend and sits on the bleachers all night weeping into his b-ball jersey.
0
DAWSON’S FREAK

BLACK EYED PEAS
Meet Me Halfway
Polydor
FUCK THESE GUYS TO HELL. The only circumstance in which I would ever consider going out of my way to meet these pricks halfway is if they urgently needed a ride and I was driving a cess-tanker full of faeces and vomit from a refugee camp with a bad dysentery problem and the BEP had to jump in the cesspit as we drove across a desert. Then and only then would I care to go out of my way to meet them.
0
WILL.I.NEVER

JLS
Everybody in Love
Epic
People are so down on TV talent shows these days. But then you hear a song like this, and you see these guys, who wear knitwear so well, and then it all makes sense again. TV talent shows are the divining rods guiding us to the purest music in the UK today.
4
LOUISH WALSH

JAMIE CULLUM
I’m All Over It
Decca
If Ant and Dec had sex with a hacky sack, Jamie Cullum would be born.
0
CHAZ DARWIN

JULIAN CASABLANCAS
11th Dimension
Cult Records
So despite the fact the last Strokes record was pretty gash and his collaboration with Pharrell and some other fashionable people for an advert was instantly forgettable (I’ve already forgotten all the details), Julian’s come up trumps with a weirdo electronic pop hit that serves to make you realise how much you missed his affected croon.
8
JOHN WAIL

THE HORRORS
Whole New Way
XL
Less good than most of the stuff on their last album. Still better than most stuff.
9
HORRID HENRY

PAOLO NUTINI
Pencil Full of Lead
Atlantic Records
Every morning I wake up to Magic FM. My girlfriend loves the station’s ability to play the same 12 songs incessantly, all of which are so inoffensive that they might as well be the aural equivalent of a nice neutral wallpaper. Nutini has recently made it onto the playlist, though, and ruins the whole effect by nestling like a poisoned morning-after vomit stain amongst the so-boring-it’s-OK Tracy Chapman and Wings beige music. Thanks for single-handedly spoiling my morning, Nutini.
0
BILLIE BUNTER

SNOW PATROL
Just Say Yes
Polydor
This is definitely not another mope-rock song with some electronica thrown on top to make the band seem a little more cutting edge. It’s on ode to taking drugs.
0
RAT STEVENS

WET DOG
Lower Leg
Angular
If I could still afford to by lots of records purely on the strength of sleeve quality alone, this would be on the top of my stack. Or high up in my Boomkat basket or wherever it is that you buy records online these days. The fact that the tune is a nice, shouty bass-lead piece of post-punk perfection doesn’t hurt either.
9
STRAP’EM JONES